This blog is dedicated to Computer RolePlaying Games (CRPG) that have been released a long time ago or new games with CRPG heritage and that I will revisit in one way or another. I will either replay them or write about the hidden gems well worth playing today. Games will be played through Dosbox or WinUAE.

Currently playing: Sword Coast Legends, Skyrim

January 7, 2012

Dark heart of Uukrul - things are getting improved

Just after advancing up to level 5 I noticed combats begun to get easier. I could turn on auto-combat far more often and movement within the caves went quicker since I could sustain longer. Although I need more and more experience points to reach the next level I also won more fights quickly.

Since I moved into new areas I also met new creatures which gave a lot more XP than I was used to. My favourite encounter is with flying creatures like shrieking birds or higher level specialisations of that sort. They give much XP but are not that difficult to defeat. In one single combat I got almost 2.000 xp alone.

Do you think I was happy to receive this ?

After advancing through a huge cavern I finally made it to a new Sanctuary called URRAN. There was a lot of secret doors in the area and I searched every wall by using the mana-draining spell Talis. In some fights even the priest surprised me with the ability to summon an earth elemental. But still 80 % of the prayers invoked fails. At level 6 things got even more stable regarding your fighting capabilities. All small fights that do not give much XP at least give you enough money to sustain your food supplies.

Seldom have I been so happy as when I finally got it to the URSHAS sanctuary. The game is slowly turning over to feature more puzzles and disorientations. More unmappable areas which forces you to either draw your own maps or be very, very patient.

With URSHAS as my new base I begun to explore the eastern surroundings. In the very first door we entered we where attacked by snakes (a new creature), called Death Adder. I think that was the hardest enemies of all so far. They both stun and poison you, not to mention are capabale of inflicting over 130 damage.

These snakes are my worst enemies

Needles to say, my group was wiped out in the above encounter and next time I avoided this place. The number of encounters are much fewer albeit they are harder, but they also give a lot more experience. I have found a favourite spot further on where a certain encounter repeats itself forever. It is with the creature below. It is very dangerous since there is a very high chance that you break your weapon when you hit it (and that costs a lot of money to repair) and if you are hit you will loose part of your armour due to instant rusting.

However, except for that the creature in itself is not very dangerous but gives huge amount of XP. I used this place to some grinding and quickly gained 10.000 xp in order to get the whole group to level 7. The tactics used was to call for an elemental to keep the creature occupied while I hope to invoke the prayer RALKOR on the beast. Two successfull spells and he will be dead. The mage has no spells that affect the beast nearly as much.

However, my mission is to find more hearts and so far I have only three but have reached two new Sanctuaries so I expect at least one must be hidden somewhere. We came upon a mirror on the wall that revealed some sort of sigh that Mara said was important to understand. I have no clue yet in what way.

Just some bit after meeting the crocodile creature we stumbled upon a grate we could open but which was looked by Uukral himself after entering. We could however plead to him to open it in order to get back to safety but I must admit it was humiliating.

Instead of writing down certain texts or messages (I am too lazy to bother). I now take a screenshot of the them instead. This hammer below symoblises something, but so far I have no idea. It looks like a map though.

New creatures greets us

When level up I have noticed one thing. It seems impossible to get high random values at the same time. Always when you get good attribute increases you are almost always punished by few hitpoints. And if not on the same character then on the next in line. So - though I cannot say it works that way - my feeling is that there is a pool of points that are distributed somewhat evenly through different areas with a little random pool to add to it.

Regarding the magic system, it is becoming more and more useful. When you reach level 8 or so, your wizard finally has some very potent spells like remove poison, forcing secret doors to open and more powerful direct attack spells. I have had to write down the spells that are useful in a specific textdocument that I have open at the same time that I play in order to get the name of the spell easily. More powerful version of the same spelltype has the same suffix lik MUR or LAZAR which makes it more easy to use them.

Below is the character sheet of my berzerker Rennard. He is currently at level 7 and carries no weapon (my silver sword was broken).

Rennards inventory is shown below. The highlighted letters are the equipped items. The whole game is keyboard based and works pretty well.

My worst enemies described above was quite easily destroyed when I levelled up one or two levels and got access to more powerful spells. Amraslazar killed them quickly and yielded a lot of experience. As, seen below XP is given individually depending on how much damage you have dealt to the dead enemies.

Right now I am exploring a diamond shaped maze and I hope that somewhere within lies another heart. Compared with how I ended my last post, I will end this post by saying that the game truly has changed for the better. Up until level 5 the game is quite hard and with too many fights. Now it is more streamlined, encounters are at reasonable intervals, gives more experience and are therefore more pleasant to endure. I have put at least 20 hours into this game so far and have no idea how big this game will turn out to be. But I will continue playing as long as I am enjoying myself (I haven´t played Skyrim for 2 weeks because of this game).

I'm near the end of Uukrul. I could have completed it a week ago, but I've been too busy reading up on Dragonlance (including Legend of Huma) before I start playing the Dragonlance Gold Box games.Of all the classic turn based CRPGs, the Krynn series is my favourite.

So, have you abandoned this game? If you think combat is too hard, it's gets easier on the later levels, but the puzzles are very hard, though.I just completed the game myself, but I must admit cheated a bit on some of the puzzles since I don't have much patience for word puzzles.I found this excellent "Let's play" to be very helpful - http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/lets-play-dark-heart-of-uukrul-dead-and-done.54028/

@PetrusOctavianusFor the time being I have paused the game. The combats are not the issue. The upcoming puzzles as well as the amount of them makes me think I have at least another 25 hours or so to put into the game. Then I don´t count the time to try to solve the puzzles for which I don´t have neither patience or time right now.

If you like old-school RPGs, you´ll love this!

Who am I ?

Stockholm, Sweden
I grew up with Commodore 64 and Amiga and the first CRPG that totally blowed me away was Bard´s Tale for C-64 in 1988.
New RPGs tends to be more and more simplistic and consolified so I have begun to return to the roots to feed my hunger for CRPGS.
Professionally I work as a systems developer and project leader.